Musical Fidelity - brutal and unrefined ?

I have been looking and listening at Amps and CD players for some time , and have some hope that I will find the sound I am after , I have always found the MF kit I have listened to brutal and unrefined , except one home set up in which there was a high end MF amp to outragously expensive speakers, most of my listening has been in HI FI demo rooms - dealers seem very fond of it, am I missing something ?

Regards

Alby

 

Maybe you like some sugar coating on your pill?

 

I too, dislike the MF sound when I have heard it. But then, it's all in the ears of the individual, yours and my 'brutal and unforgiving' is someone elses accurate and transparent.
If you like something a little warmer, try valves, or solid state such as primare, electrocompaniet, or even arcam

 

brutal m.f.? the only thing that's brutal about m.f. is the boss..nando

 

I'd mostly agree too, though not the end of the world. If you like the look of mf its not hard to improve the sound by careful selection of new parts.

I've just spent sunday rebuilding [another ] xdacv3 which went from nassal upfront to open and natural [with a huge sound stage].

The designs are often good but it appears that the bean counters have put the cheapest components in they can find ie jamicon caps etc.

 

hi peter, "for all is worth" try black gate caps..regards nando.

 

what about the shaven hair?

 

Nando, just curious but did you replace their standard (jamicon?) caps for black gates in a particular MF unit? If so, how did this effect the result?

 

I hate the ...horribly expensive weeks to break in .....

I use pana fc in power supplys

stargets and pio's else where...

 

black gates

i did replaced their cheap (jamicon's) on two items that i have, nu-vita 300 amp/pwr supply, and nu-vista M3 int. amp, high freq. mid, vocals, speed , the list is very long, not cheap but worth all the musicality pleasure that it brings, super caps, nando.

 

Nando, Zanash, thanks for this. I understood that MF designs are pretty good but also sensitive to replacement of the components used.

 

i don't know about the more recent gear, but i previously owned 2 A100's and absolutely loved the sound from them.

i found them to be, if anything, on the warm side of neutral..?

also had positive experiences with A-370 and P-180's...also XA-200's
while my F25 pre was very revealing and much more forward, but never unrefined

showing my age i know!

 

I liked my XA/2 and XA200 biamped setup very much. Wish I hadn't sold them.

 

Most of MF's gear is generally pretty good - not necessarily best in class but not terrible either. They certainly seem more preoccupied with the aesthetics of their gear rather than the component inside - never mind the quality feel the width.

It seems that it has become fashionable to slag them off - largely their own fault mind, due to the ridiculous hyperbole of some of their marketing and the never ending changes to their product line up which makes depreciation pretty heavy.

 

I agree whole-heartedly. Their marketing is the reason why I'd never buy another MF product.

 

From what I remember it was MOre like you gave them away than sold them at the price you offered them at!

 

back in the day mf were my choice in amps- there weren't any other british companies building high current solid state amps to rival the likes of krell. bit warmer sounding, too. i think of 2 brace of P180's with CRPS (yup), or the SA470...what a bit of kit!

personalities is a tricky one, and i'll refrain from saying anything libellous. all i will say is things seemed to go downhill about the time of the odesyuss (?), which coincided with my leaving the trade. so my memories may be distorted by ignorance of everything that has transpired since

i generally thought their gear spanked naim's bottom, but then again i always had 'alternatives' to the ubiquitous LP12 so what do i know..? the sound just seemed to have a life and depth that was lacking in many solid state amps of the time, together with an inherent musicallity.
it was a real toss up for me between XA200 monoblocks and the Krell KSA100 i decided upon. the mfs had a sweeter, more enjoyable sound, and were clearly going to be less fatiguing in the long run. i would characterise it as an "english" sounding amp; not strident or aggressive, but utterly seductive and guaranteed to draw you in
many people would have picked the mfs in a blind test, but i couldn't live without the darkness or the soundstage, so i bought the Krell

gav

 

ok alchemist were also building big amps, but they were a bit too twitchy for me :JOEL:

 

I had a MF E624 with A1000 for a long time and enjoyed it. Not a high resolution set up, but enjoyable when warmed up.

The newer stuff that I have heard (Tri Vista/A3.2) is more 'hi-fi', but not brutal or unrefined, certainly not to my ears. Good but not amazing.

Mind you, I think the X10-V3 is the biggest piece of junk I have ever heard. What is the point of it, why would you bother???

 

Because you might "need" to upgrade from your out of date V1 or V2!